A thought-terminating cliché is a saying, often a tautology, that is repeated in order to relieve the stress of cognitive dissonance by avoiding all further consideration of a matter. Everyday examples include "it is what it is," "it's just common sense," and "you gotta do what you gotta do."

These sorts of clichés are common in totalitarian societies; according to Hannah Arendt, Adolf Eichmann "was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché," and he used these clichés as a mental defense mechanism to avoid thinking about what he was doing for the Nazi Party.[2]